Working as a civil engineer?

sja360

sja360

sja360

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Hopefully some of you from overclockers are currently working as a civil engineer and can give me a good overview of what the job involves, I'm currently working 2 weeks on and off as a marine engineer however I'm looking into open uni doing a civil engineering degree.
I just wish to find out a more realistic outlook on what civil engineering involves day to day.I appreciate there is consulting and contract civil engineering however it would be good to hear opinions on both.
Cheers,
Stephen
 
If you're already working as an engineer, an open university degree may not be worthwhile. Depends a bit on what "marine engineer" means to you though - are you happy with calculus and stress distributions?

I believe civil engineering is primarily concerned with the forces a structure needs to deal with, since this dictates the size of the steel beams / thickness of concrete and consequently the cost. This might be simple beam theory or finite element analysis. I think the general plan is to work out what stress a component is under and then refer to a standards book to see what size beam you want.

Mechanical engineering has some bias towards standards, but they're more likely to be company standards than British standards. Day to day, you might be calculating stresses on moving parts, so there's the added excitement of fatigue and creep. Or working out vibrational modes, to see whether you can spin an engine up to speed without it shaking itself to bits. I hear the phrase "CAD monkey" thrown around a lot, but since CAD work is quite fun that's no bad thing. As it happens, the last four months I've spent as a mechanical engineer involved writing Fortran full time - that's relatively unusual.

In either field, there's considerable emphasis placed on management and minimising risk. I know close to nothing about these since I'm only aspiring to solve technical problems.
 
What Jon has described is typically civil but more specialised into structural I would say. You may also find the possibility of delving into the worlds of geotechnics, hydraulics, hydrology, transportation, building services, building acoustics... it can take you in a lot of different directions (as do the 'main' branches of engineering), it can be a very broad subject.
 
"Civil Engineering" covers a very wide remit:

Infrastructure - highways, airports, railways
Traffic engineering
Water - Rivers, Drainage (Storm water & waste water management), Supply
Coastal
Structures - as mentioned above, both buildings and bridges
Project management
Fire engineering
Waste engineering
Energy - power stations etc

Loads of stuff!

In my experience, despite the choice most civil engineers don't like what they do! Compared to the rest of the world UK engineers are pretty poorly paid and held in lower regard socially.

They are however regarded quite highly in the rest of the world.

Most of the civil engineers I know have told me not to move into the sector (it's very heavily affected by boom-and-bust). 3 of them recently emigrated to Aus/NZ to seek better propects.
 
paddy said:
! Compared to the rest of the world UK engineers are pretty poorly paid and held in lower regard socially.
Click to expand...

People ask me whether I can fix their car. Aside from that, I'm pretty happy with the social standing of engineers. We seem to be grouped in with lawyers/doctors.

Pay is a difficult one. Graduate engineering roles range from 18k to 50k on joining, depending on size of company and whether or not they're consultants. A common complaint is that the initial salary is competitive, but you'll be on the same salary after a decade. Management is prone to better salaries than engineering, which is annoying.

I certainly wouldn't caution people away from engineering based on the expected salary. Scientists have a much worse time of it, and only finance really outstrips us.
 
Being grouped in the same band as people who fix the photocopiers can be a bit disappointing! Especially when in Europe "Engineer" has protected status.
My friends have had issues with phone sales people (insurance etc) who refuse to believe engineering is a professional job.

I think you articulated the salaries issue better than me, but I haven't seen an "engineer" engineer on anything near 50k (and all my friends work for consultant engineering firms). The big money is all in management, usually to the "wiz-kid" who spends 1 year straight out of uni unable to actually solve any problems but talking ****, gets fast tracked into management, then promoted to the point of incompetence.

In my experience it just seems to be populated with managers with no *real* experience, just a pair of very slopey shoulders!

Sorry, I'm ranting :mad: I've probably just seen the bad side of things!
 
paddy said:
Being grouped in the same band as people who fix the photocopiers can be a bit disappointing! Especially when in Europe "Engineer" has protected status.
My friends have had issues with phone sales people (insurance etc) who refuse to believe engineering is a professional job.

I think you articulated the salaries issue better than me, but I haven't seen an "engineer" engineer on anything near 50k (and all my friends work for consultant engineering firms). The big money is all in management, usually to the "wiz-kid" who spends 1 year straight out of uni unable to actually solve any problems but talking ****, gets fast tracked into management, then promoted to the point of incompetence.

In my experience it just seems to be populated with managers with no *real* experience, just a pair of very slopey shoulders!

Sorry, I'm ranting :mad: I've probably just seen the bad side of things!
Click to expand...

A graduate who works in oil and gas could earn that with offshore pay. I've not seen a graduate starting base salary of £50k however.
 
paddy said:
I think you articulated the salaries issue better than me, but I haven't seen an "engineer" engineer on anything near 50k (and all my friends work for consultant engineering firms). The big money is all in management, usually to the "wiz-kid" who spends 1 year straight out of uni unable to actually solve any problems but talking ****, gets fast tracked into management, then promoted to the point of incompetence.
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised the pay difference between different engineering generes, I know very few who earn less than 50k.

KaHn
 
I class myself as a civil engineer. I work in the rail industry and earn a nice healthy wage. Lots of hours and hard work mind.
 
One I didn't see listed was weight engineering.

I'm not a civil engineer myself but I work close to them as a electrical engineer in oil and gas.

The pay for graduates seems to be from25k to 30k straight out of uni, and as with all real engineering it involves 90% of your time behind a desk googling regulations for specs.
 
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